designSTUDIOmodern

rainwater harvesting

The amazing and prolific storms that moved through central Texas yesterday and last night got us to thinking about rainwater harvesting systems again. We've been proponents of the idea since WAY back to our first project out at Deep Eddy West. For that project we used two 10K gallon tanks to capture the rain from over 4000s.f. of roof area off two separate buildings. The water is used for potable water as well as landscape irrigation, and actually lasted them through the recent drought (just barely!) Of course that particular 20K gallon system was integral to the overall design of the project. We knew rainwater was going to be a big component from the get-go and designed the buildings and systems accordingly (hence the butterfly roof on the big building and the shed roof on the smaller building...)

 

 

There are also simple systems available for retrofit applications for collecting rainwater for landscape usage around your house. Non-potable systems are incredibly easy, especially if you already have gutters and downspouts. Our personal favourite system is the RainWater H2OG. We like it so much that we became distributors of the product and use the tanks in our own projects for most any situation where we need to hold water (potable water and waste water tanks for our various food trailer projects.) The best part of the Rainwater H2OG system is that it is low-profile and modular, so it can be installed along the walls of your house, distributed around to various downspout locations, or built within the structure of a wooden deck. No more needing to figure out how best to hide a big ugly old water tank.

 

If you'd like some pricing information for the rainwater hogs, or to discuss the install of an entire rainwater harvesting system give us a shout.

Small house

Sometimes in the design/build business you meet clients that want to do some nice and simple things. They seem incredibly sane and together when you first meet them, but as the talking to them about their project drags on into months, and then years, and everytime you have a meeting the project scope has changed significantly, you just get the sinking feeling that they are maybe a bit crazy. Then one day they call you out of the blue and are "ready to get started," so naturally you jump at the chance to finally be able to put pen to paper and get some of those ideas out of your head and into the wild. The ideas that have been bouncing around in your head for a year or so just spill out and an almost fully formed design rises out of the flurry of activity. You're jazzed because the project is so strong, and it meets and excedes every single programmatic requirement and desire expressed in the various discussions, and no compromises reared their ugly little heads in the process. You are very happy with the whole thing and can't wait to get it built...

 

and then that feeling you had all along (rememeber the one where you thought the client may be a bit crazy?) becomes so very right...

 

Well this design was like that. Which is too bad really, because as you can see this would be a great little house.

 

 

At 838sf conditioned space, with a modest master suite and a bonus bedroom/office, this house would live like a much larger house with the various decks and protected space. Simple, small, easy to build, efficient. Nice.

 

 

Big Boy flattery

 

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so we are duely flattered that the big boys over at Starbuck's are opening up their own shipping container coffee shop. While we surely beat Starbuck's to the punch, it's likely that we weren't the first to get a full time coffee shop open in a repurposed shipping container. While we may not have been the first, we sure blazed a trail of good design, and pushed the envelope of shipping container coffee-shop-dom! Either way we'll take the flatteryand the imitation!

 

(photo credit: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com)

The good folks over at State Impact/NPR picked up on the story and gave us a nice shoutout for all three of our shipping container based projects to date. I'm sure they'll be happy to know that there are more projects like that on the boards. Info on those projects to drop soon.

 

 

CultureMapping

We got a nice write up over at AustinCultureMap .com

Here's the link

 

nearing completion

the lightBOX addition and studio project is nearing completion. Just working on punchlist items now.

 

newsworthy

KVUE news stopped by the shop today to do a quick interview about building with shipping containers, and to cover our la Boîte and other shipping container based projects. Not a bad bit of exposure:

 

 

 

 

Getting set

The second la Boite box is pushing forward for the final few days of work before permitting and setting it up on site. Plumbing has gone in, cabinets and fridges, have been set, and the folding window wall has been glazed. All that's left on the insides of the trailer are the setting of the sinks, final electrical trim-out, mini-split AC install, and various minor trim bits. Masking off of logos and exterior paint are up soon after!    

 

 

 

Quonset

Not being ones to shy away from new (to us) building techniques, we were recently asked to erect a quonset hut kit on some remote (read: no power or water...) ranch out east of Austin.

 

 

The kit, provided by SteelMaster, is an amazingly efficient use of material to cover a given area. The building we are putting up is roughly 25' by 50' and the amount of materials basically fit on a 7' long pallet, with a few 10' long base plates bundled along.

After the 2' stem walls were poured and the whole area between them packed with roadbase, we set to work bolting the base plates down to the tops of the stem walls with expansion anchors. Once all of those were bolted down and trued up all the arches had to be bolted together. Each arch is composed of multiple corrugated panels (all the same for the whole kit) and starter panels on one end. This took two guys the better part of a day and half to do. Thats a LOT of nuts and bolts!

 

 

After that we had to wait for a non-breezy day. We gathered a few more workers to help with the lifting and bolting, set up our scaffolding and ladders and started to lift up arches and provisionally bolt them together.

 

 

Once we had a few arches up, we prodded and pulled the building into symmetrical shape, making sure the centers of the arches lined up with the center of the space between stem walls, and tightened everything down. From then on it is just a matter of getting all the arches up and loosely bolted in so nothing can blow away. Once all the arches are up, and the 18' wide side-opening beams, columns, and partial arches are installed, we'll go back and bolt EVERYTHING down and tighten it all up.

 

 

 

hool Bus

Ran across a link to a flickr set from my first clients (of the Deep Eddy West project.) It seems they've gotten hooked up with some film folks and are building out the interior of their unfinished shop space as a film set. Not the type of work we'd ever conceived of when the space was being designed and built, but come to think of it, it makes total sense. Continuous space, high ceilings, balanced daylighting, easy access to attached staging areas... It's like it was made to be a sound stage...

 

 

Don't know much about the hool Bus, but from the looks of the flickr set, I'd bet it won't be all pristine and yellow for long.

 

la Boîte, part deux

While we've been playing around in dumpster pools, roasting pigs, building a sushi trailer, and enjoying SXSW2011 maybe a little too much, we've also been busy building out a second version of the la Boîte trailer for a new downtown Austin location. This makes the third shipping container-based food trailer we've worked on, and it will be followed by a third la Boîte as well.

 

 

There are only minor updates and changes to the general layout. The major change (other than colour) is the need to "shorten" the sliding door due to site constraints (more about that in a future entry...) To that end we hinged a flap of the big sliding door, so that it folds back on itself and creates a little protected area around the tongue when in the open position. The logo will be changed up a little bit from the original, because of the extra exposure of the hinged flap to passers-by at the new site, so we'll have a big "Boîte" on the large section of the slider and a vertical "la Boîte" on the smaller hinged flap.

 

 

As before the logos will be masked off before the body of the box is painted. It's gonna be just as pretty as the original.

 

Today we started the install of the linoleum to the floors rolling up onto the back wall. Similar detail as in the original, but with a larger diameter cove in this incarnation. I'm loving the way it intersects with the door frame. It really calls attention to the continuity of surface.

 

 

Expect an opening at the new downtown location in late April or first week of May.